This group trip is open onlyto applications from new media journalists–including media professionals, bloggers, influential social media practitioners, and freelance contributors–who are citizens of the following nations: France, Germany, India, Malawi, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, United Kingdom and United States.

As the international community strives to accelerate progress toward the impending 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development goals, a new focus has emerged on scaling available and proven interventions that could save huge numbers of newborns from early death or disease.

Ethiopia has made impressive progress on cutting mortality rates for children, meeting the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child deaths by more than 60 percent over the past 20 years.

Yet major health and development challenges remain as millions of Ethiopian babies come into the world under precarious conditions. In particular, three preventable and treatable conditions still persist: premature births, complications during childbirth and infections.

The IRP trip will focus on efforts to prevent newborn deaths, as well as provide an overview of maternal and child health, immunizations, nutrition, communicable diseases, and health care provision in Ethiopia, among other topics.

All candidates must fill out an application form and provide a detailed essay of at least 800 words describing the types of stories they might pursue during the Ethiopia trip.

The deadline for applications is Monday, April 21.

The IRP will purchase the Fellows’ roundtrip air tickets to Ethiopia and will pay for visas, hotel costs, meals and local transportation. Fellows who wish to extend their stay after the fellowship will have the option to arrange that at their own expense.

Participants will be asked to post frequent stories–including blog posts, slideshows, social media posts, video and audio clips–before, during and after the trip.